


Together Let's:

by Leidolette



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-14
Updated: 2012-10-20
Packaged: 2017-11-12 04:25:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/486660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leidolette/pseuds/Leidolette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of Jade/Dave prompt fics.</p><p>Latest prompt: Paint Something<br/>Spoiler: The something is each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Go Tanning

You stretch out on your beach towel and feel the sun settle down warm beneath your skin. You hear the waves, the faraway birds, the gently rustling palms. It’s times like these when you appreciate just how lovely your island is.

You close your eyes and drift for a while.

_DING!_

Your nearby lunchtop brings you back with the familiar sound of a chum pestering you. You pull the lunchtop closer and check the blinking chumhandle: turntechGodhead. You smile.

— turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering gardenGnostic [GG] —

TG: jade

TG: guess what i got

TG: no its not two tickets to anthrocon god keep it in your fursuit for one minute here harley

GG: hi dave!

GG: and believe it or not i do not spend all day running around dressed as an animal

GG: no matter how fun it may be!

GG: i save that for special occasions ;)

TG: the worst part is that i have no idea if you are kidding or not

GG: i am!!! :D

TG: good because im sending you something and if the first thing i see when i run the goddamn thing is a load of polyester fur and plastic anime eyes im going to have to reconsider just about everything in my life

TG: you dont want to be responsible for crisis of faith do you?

— turntechGodhead [TG] sent gardenGnostic [GG] the file “pesterface.exe” —

Oooooh, video conferencing! You download that sucker and install it right away. You add his chumhandle and check all of the relevant boxes and bluh bluh bluh. Your mouse hovers over the connect button. You flip back over to Pesterchum for a second.

GG: smile Dave!

_Connect_

And suddenly there’s Dave. Sitting at his computer. You’ve seen him before in some pictures he’s sent you all, and he looks much the same; there’s his light hair and the particular shape of his jaw and the aviators that cover up half of his face. Wow, he really does wear his sunglasses all of the time!

But really it’s not the same at all. Your lunchtop’s holographic display blows his face up to life-size and does its best to give his image some three-dimensionality. You can see the small rise of his chest when he breathes and his fingers fiddling a little bit on his desk, and when he turns his face directly at the camera it almost feels like he is here with you.

There is a big difference.

You snoop on what little you can see of his room over his shoulder. There are lots and lots of posters all over his walls and you can just barely see part of his rumpled bed over in the corner. There’s a clothesline hung with home-developed pictures; you would really like to see those!

“Hey.”

You hear his voice for the first time and you have such a wide smile that your eyes are scrunching up. It’s been so long since your island has heard a human voice besides your own and you are so _so_ glad.

He’s looking at his own screen and his eyebrows raise a little.

“You put that on just for me?”

You look down at your bathing suit, it’s bright lime and polka dotted, and kinda small on you now (pfft, it’s not like there’s a mall right around the corner). Honestly you had forgotten you were wearing it. “Nooo, I put it on for that,” you turn your lunchtop and its built-in webcam towards the ocean. You wonder if the water looks as wonderfully blue on his monitor as it does from the beach.

“You really do live on some Land Before Time primordial island, huh?” but he’s got just a hint of smile at the corner of his mouth and you think he liked the ocean.

“Want to see a little more?” 

You abandon your sleepy spot on the beach in favor of giving Dave a guided tour of the shoreline. You angle the computer over a tidal pool to give him a good look at some sea anemones. He dares you to touch them like that is some sort of big deal and that’s when it is basically confirmed to you that Dave knows nothing about animals. You wander on and set your computer on the ground near the tree line so he can watch you shimmy up a palm and grab a coconut; when you crow at him from the top holding your prize high above your head you think you get a laugh out of him, but it’s hard to tell from this height.

You whistle for Bec but he doesn’t come; sometimes he is camera shy.

The sun is just beginning to set when you finally get a chance to turn the tables and see how Dave lives. It’s hard to imagine what his life might be like, you really only have the stuff you see on the internet and in movies to go on. You know about school and cars and grocery stores and such, though you doubt he has an overly dramatic soundtrack following him around all the time. Well, probably not.

He turns his webcam on its base so you can get a view of his whole room, but aside from his turntables and shitty swords there’s really not much more to it than what you were able to see earlier over his shoulder. You ignore the sloppy, finger-painted drawings of Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff all over his walls. You know better than to mention them.

“Can I see the rest of your apartment? Can I talk to your bro? Oooh, wait! How about the roof? So I can finally see where the _big strifes hapen!_ ” You hope he can hear that lack of a ‘p’.

He shakes his head, “My webcam’s attached to my desktop and my bro’s not home. I’m afraid this is all you’re gonna see of my own personal playboy mansion.”

“Oh,” you can’t keep the disappointment out of your voice.

You notice his eyebrows furrow just a bit. “Hold up, maybe I can install this real quick on my bro’s laptop. I’m not really supposed to mess with it, but whatever. I know his password, we’re tight. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

The feed goes dead.

You are left staring at a blank window. You lie back down on your beach towel and wait. You can still hear the waves and the birds, but the beach seems so quiet now without his voice. You watch the sinking sun. You wiggle your fingers in the sand and wonder for the hundred millionth time where all your pumpkins are disappearing to.

_DING!_

Yes! Dave’s back!

You reestablish the connection and when the feed pops up you are momentarily thrown off. Dave’s there, but the picture is super shaky. It looks like he’s… in a hallway? Climbing some stairs?

“Sorry to deprive you of a tour of my place, but the living room is full of smuppet business right now. I mean, it’s cool. They’re so totally cool…” Dave trails off and his face takes on a haunted expression for a moment before he snaps out of it, “But that’s some high-level irony. Little island dweller like you has got to work up to this shit.”

You roll your eyes. You think those smuppets are weird and you know that Dave thinks they’re weird too, if he would ever just admit it. You wonder if he would believe you if you told him that you’ve been further than he’s ever travelled; that you’ve flown over golden cities and have attended a royal court.

Probably not.

This thought, while not new, gets you a little down until Dave reaches a dingy grey door, when he pushes it open you think of nothing other than what you see before you.

The only city you’ve ever seen is the capitol city of Prospit, and it looks nothing like this. The buildings are dark silhouettes against the purple night sky with pinpricks of light at the windows, but the streets look bright and alive. The yellowy glow from the streetlights and storefronts dims the stars, and even from the height of Dave’s towering apartment building you can hear the occasional car horn and the faint strains of faraway music. Dave walks over to the ledge and pans the camera across the city skyline; there are lights as far as the eye can see.

You feel a wave of longing for all of the people and the food and the roads and everything that is outside the tiny realm of your island.

“Oh! It’s beautiful. I would very much like to be there with you right now.” you trace your finger around the outline of a purple-black building.

“Hey it’s not like you’re gonna be on that island forever. You’ll turn eighteen and break out your Daddy Warbuck-style sacks of money with huge dollar signs on the side and fly out here first class. We’ll get some barbeque and you’ll be like ‘remember when I was stuck on that island full of malaria and dinosaurs? hahahaha’ and then we’ll laugh and laugh.”

“Maybe, Dave!”

You do know that you will leave your island eventually. It just won’t be in the way he thinks.

“Anyways, look what I got. I think I want to catch some sun too.”

He sets the laptop down on the ledge and disappears off screen for a moment, he returns a moment later with a fluffy bath towel that he spreads out on the roof. He sits down and pulls off his shirt like he really is going to get a tan. The moonlight glows pale on his skin and his light hair looks almost silver.

You feel… interested.

Dave reaches over to grab something again, “Check this out. So fucking tropical.”

He has an open bottle of apple juice with an orange slice on the lip, as if it were a cocktail. The bottle opening is too small to comfortably fit an orange slice and it hits his nose when he takes a drink, but it makes you laugh and he smiles. You watch the breeze ruffle his hair.

“Not too cold?” you ask.

“I’m hurt that you don’t know by now that I am chiller than liquid nitrogen, but other than that I’m fine. This is the only time that it’s bearable to be outside. And besides,” he says, running his fingers over the towel, “the roof is still giving off some sick heat.”

Dave is your friend. He is thousands of miles away.

He leans back on his elbows and sips his apple juice while you break open the coconut with a knife. You both drink as he stretches out beneath the moon and you feel the last rays of sun leave your skin as it disappears below the horizon.


	2. Kiss at Midnight

The bar is crowded and loud. Out of the corner of your eye you can see some tool handing out a whole bag full of dollar store noisemakers and you know that in a couple of minutes this place will get a whole lot louder.

Doesn’t matter.

You look at Jade. She looks back at you, smiles. Your toes curl inside your shoes and you blink behind your shades.

**Three!**

**Two!**

**One!**

**Happy New Year!**

Out of fucking nowhere Jade twirls away from you and grabs John and lays one on him, right on the mouth. Rose is next and their teeth actually clink together for a moment before completing the lip-lock because they’re both smiling too much.

It lasts only a second, and then Jade turns back towards you with distractingly shiny lips.

John shouts “Woo! Happy New Year!” in the background before leaning over to smooch Rose. You think you may be next on the docket for at least one of those two, but you have some other pressing kiss business to take care of right now.

Jade steps closer to you. Real close. You’re half perched on a bar stool and she gets right between your knees. You have about half a million smart ass comments you could make right now but you decide to shut up for once and see how this plays out.

She reaches out and traces down the temple of your shades and then runs her fingers through your hair and lets her hand rest on the back of your neck. You stay very still; it’s important to stay hella cool right now. Then she leans forward and kisses you.

You kiss back. Its nice and slow and your shades tap against her glasses. You can feel her teeth and her tongue and it’s really, really good so you slide your arms around her back and pull her in until you are chest to chest. The crowd around you attempts to slur their way through Auld Lang Syne as you bite her lip.

You pull back before it gets to be a full-blown makeout session (alright, it might have been there already) and look at her. Her face is flushed and smiling. She’s looking you right in the eye and, oh my god, her smile is actually a little bit fucking smug. It’s so dumbly heartwarming that you just have to lean in again and-

John blows a noisemaker right in your ear


	3. Ride a Ferris Wheel

The Ferris wheel creaks to a stop right when you and Dave are at the top. The car tilts back and forth for a moment and you are reminded of swimming through ocean waves; this is the farthest you’ve ever been from the sea in your entire life.

When you look over the side there’s popcorn and ponies and restless teens and everything that you were led to believe a nighttime summer carnival would contain. Music and rowdiness fill the air and when you look at Dave you can see all the colors from the game stall lights reflected in his curved, black lenses.

Everything tonight is so beautiful.

“Hey Jade, not gonna hurl are you? Because if you puke on a ride as weakass as this, imperial carnival law states that you must be banished to the petting zoo until you grow the hell up. Totally true, Terezi told me.”

You laugh. “The petting zoo is the best! Besides, I think you are the one who is going to hurl!”

With that you push yourself against the safety bar and the whole car starts pitching back and forth. Dave is just starting to look a little green around the gills when the occupants of the car behind you shout “When this wheel’s a rockin’ don’t come a knockin’!” and it’s so stupid and sudden that you can’t help it — you crack up. Dave makes this over-exaggerated kissy face at you and slips his arm around your shoulders like you are his best girl that he can’t wait to take out to the sock hop if only his old man will let him borrow the car.

You’re still laughing when the ride starts back up with a bone-deep rattle and you begin your descent through a night breeze that is as warm as blood.


	4. Paint Something

You are Dave Strider and what is this, 2005?

Another glob of fluorescent paint splatters all over your shoe and you shuffle closer to the wall in an attempt to save your outfit. It's probably a futile attempt seeing as how there's a plastic bowl full of colored paint every five feet and no shortage of drunk college kids out to have a good time.

Your just a little pissy because you've got Jade within a thousand miles of you for only three nights and you can't believe that you're apparently gonna waste one of them here. You mean, you two had only wondered into this campus house party to see you could get a free beer. You didn't expect a full-on paint party in the basement.

But at least that original goal seems to have been accomplished. You spot Jade cutting through the crowd with two plastic cups foaming over at the top. However, she hasn't returned from her expedition unscathed.

Jade's got a nice stripe of lilac on her elbow, and her hair has big blotches of blue and purple smeared over her natural black. You pre-gamed earlier, so maybe it's the shots talking, but you think that they look like nebulae filling the black expanse of space. You sometimes find yourself thinking the most embarrassing thoughts when Jade is around.

Jade finally gets within range of you and hands you a cup. You take a drink and wow that's nice. "Thanks," you say, then motion towards her elbow, "Looks like someone got you."

"Yep. I'm marked for life now. Oh no! Now you are too!" she says as she quite purposefully rubs her elbow along your ribs leaving a lilac smear. You guess you were right about the probability of getting out of here with your look intact.

"Oh wow, Jade, thanks for that. But wait! What's that super exciting thing that has just at this moment shown up behind you?"

She looks over her shoulder like a chump, and you take the opportunity to dip your finger in paint and draw lightly over her collar bone, leaving behind a dark blue trail.

She turns back to you and rolls her eyes. It's on now. You know that there's no way that Jade's letting you walk home looking like anything other than a living rainbow.

Jade dips her forefinger in a plastic jug of green paint and reaches for your face. You're first instinct is to dodge, but you resist it and Jade traces your lips lime green like sloppily applied lipstick. The paint is slick and cool and a shock in the humid, hot press of the crowd.

"Now you real pretty, Dave," she says.

Your lips part and a little of the paint gets in your mouth. It doesn't taste like much; you figure it's probably fingerpaint that they give to drooling preschoolers, so you could probably eat a gallon of the stuff and be perfectly able to color inside the lines tomorrow morning.

You reach over for some more paint and gently push her face away and she laughs against your hand. When she looks up at you again her lips and lower jaw are smeared scarlet. She smiles at you and there's red paint all over her teeth like she just bit into someone's still beating heart.

You may have put more truth into that description than you realize.

You don't have time to chase that thought because she coming at you again, paint dripping from her hand. She wipes yellow streak down your chest, from your Adam's apple to your treasure trail and you try to suppress a shiver.

"Wow," you say flatly, "how artistic. Now, if you promise not to whip your shirt off and sell it on Ebay the second I have my back turned, I'll gift you with an original Strider masterpiece."

"I think most people here would be glad if I whipped my shirt off!"

"That's right Jade, be all saucy. Guess who's not getting a sweet drawing now." You dip your hand in a tub of hot pink paint anyways.

"Oh no!"

You step forward and start working your magic on the belly of her white tank top. After a few strokes Hella Jeff's face begins to take shape. The globby paint helps it to look suitably terrible. Your only regret is that there's no way to cover this in JPEG artifacts.

Jade squirms when the edge of Hella Jeff's pork chop mouth hits a ticklish spot and she laughs. You're finishing up one of the chunks of hair when you accidentally brush the underside of her breast. The backs of your knuckles leave a smear on it; she laughs again.

"Sorry," you say. You pull your hand away.

"I forgive you. _If_ I can get revenge."

"I'll take my punishment like a man, Jade," you say, standing up straight and proud like a soldier before a firing squad.

She dips her hand in a nearby bucket and then gives your non-existent man-boob a good grope. When she pulls back you've got Jade's hand print over your heart like a sky blue bullseye.

You pull up your shades for a moment to inspect the mark. "That is so inappropriate."

"Noooo, _this_ is inappropriate."

Another quick dip in some black paint and then she's got her arms around you in a tight hug -- with her hands firmly on your ass. Your heartbeat goes double time, but you don't miss a beat and both of your hands thwack down and grab a handful of Jade-butt too. You smear what's left of the hot pink paint all over the back pockets of her pants.

All around you people are doing the same. Colorful groping is the real point of a paint party. You are just another in a sea of douche bags who are using this as an opportunity to grab a boob for the sake of making art.

Who even cares though when Jade lays her head in the crook of your neck and nuzzles her fake-bloody mouth against you, warm and sweet. She sways you both back and forth to the music.

So there you are, in the basement of some trashed college house, covered in paint, with the girl who's got your heart in a vice, and you both have your hands on each other's butt.

 

Okay.


End file.
